people are taking the P*%$

[Flip & Flop]

okay, i own GC, PS2, X-Box and DC + numerous old systems and one or three handhelds lynx, GB, GBA (show off).

the problem?.....
they dont get used very often (by me) apart from PS2 and DC and even then, only to play one of the many emu's available for them.

i'm getting a GP32 just to play emu games.

question..

as good as i thought Halo was, i find my self playing games that are decades old. most friends and family (who were not into games 15 or more years ago, johnny come lately's all of them) arrive and take the P when they see me having a game of Kennedy Approach or Star Raiders when they consider the hardware they are running on. is it me stuck in a time warp or are the games of the past that much better?

or the Rose Tinted Glasses?

 

[gary]

its a sugar coated world - thats for sure!
but i love it & dont care what anyone thinks! some people love shakespeare, others Iain Banks. everyone has their own tastes - end of story.

gary

 

[lurch]

I am a great fan of the old games-i grew up with them and even though they dont look as good as todays games they are just as playable,albeit for quick blasts.You wont be playing them for more than a few hours (unlike halo)but sometimes you aint got 3+ hours spare to play a big game so a classic arcade game does great for half an hour or so.Anyone who takes the P should be told to try before they comment.They are judgeing the book by the cover-look at rez or dance dance revolution-simple graphics-great gameplay (IMHO) Maybe anyone who hasn't followed the evolution of games like we have can't appreciate the classics like we can,but then that's their loss-if they don't like em they are the ones losing out.No matter what people thing about my gaming habits I will still be playing the classics (and the new) till i'm 90.

 

[Demonix]

I play new and old which I think gives me a better range of games to play. If someone does takes the piss ask why and as long as its constructive I dont see a problem

 

[Gristy]

yer i love playing old games. i love the old genesis sonic games.

 

[ebrentnell]

Hello,

I like the classics because in most cases you can shut your brain off and just enjoy the game. Even in role playing and puzzle games.

New games are fun and very cool looking, but I find that when I need to relax the new games take as much energy as work or University classes, which really defeats the purpose of a game for me.

 

[Axeman]

Well....

Most of it is, of course, seen with a bit of a tear of nostalgia clouding thisgs up a bit. I mean, a lot of the games arn't as good when you revisit them as you remember, and probably wont keep you for as long. BUT - they had a simple class to them that no games seem to have today. Can anyone who was around back then honestly say that they get the same buzz from buying todays 39.99 wankey X-box jobbie as they did from buying, for example, Treasure Island Dizzy (after not long before completing Dizzy and being well chuffed about it!).

<rant>

I too have an X-box, as well as a PC with a Geforce 4 Ti4600 Gfx card, but do I play on these much? No I dont. I did for a bit, but now I think I proably put more hours into playing a game called 'slurp' on my pocket PC that I ever have on the X-box or PC. Seems sad, but the games these days just don't hold the fascination that those older games held. There's so little originality these days. It's like "hmm yeah - 1.32 trillion triangles per second, how thrilling.....yawn........".

Being able to play the games I play on my PC or X-box on a handheld - now THAT would be cool! I just can be arsed to sit down and dedicate the time to games playing in front of a monitor or PC. My games playing these days mostly fills the 'Dead' time I would have spent doing little else (lunch hour in Work, travelling to/from work, etc etc).

There IS one simple reason for the drop in general quality of 'playability' of games - now games have become more of a 'visual' entertainment thing, cos we have all these flashy graphics (and I'd be the first to admit I like some nice graphics - who doesn't). It's just that the games designing community now concentrates on tis more than anything else. What's the first thing that a game preview now talks about? The game engine... the graphics.... the flashy new explosions..... but NOT the plot, the playability etc etc.

</rant>

hehe - now I've got that off my chest I can say that yes, there are good and bad things about all games, but if you love older games (which I most definitely do!) then good luck to you! There's a massive back catalogue ripe for the picking, so even if you only end up picking the best 1%, you can still fill a load of SMCs and keep yourself happy for a good while.

Here's to retro gaming... may we never lose sight of our roots

What does everyone else think???

Cheers!!!

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

Probably the main thing I got the GP32 for is the Master System emulator. I grew up on that thing =P

Great to see a Genesis/Mega Drive emu soon! *hint hint*

 

[Flack]

Games "then" didn't require college degrees to play them. That's not to say they were any less complex or deep, so to speak -- I can remember devoting an entire summer to defeating Bard's Tale III. It just seems like games now are either too complex mentally (build your empire, it'll only take six months!) or too complex physically (where I just cannot possibly hit as many buttons in as short of a time as they want me to).

On a game like Pitfall (one of my common example games), you could learn the basics in 30 seconds. Run left and right, climb up and down ladders, jump over obstacles and swing on vines. That's it. But that didn't mean the game was easy to beat. Hell, I know plenty of people who never beat Pitfall. Or River Raid. Or Super Mario Brothers. Or any of those old games that were easy to learn but tough to beat.

That's how it seems to me, anyway. New games have just lost focus on what's "fun". There are exceptions, of course, but it seems like the ratio of fun games has dropped massively. I think that's what emu heads such as myself see in emulation and "going back," those fun days of gaming, when gameplay and action were more important than processing power and graphics. 320x240 pixels and 16 colors on my C64 kept me satisfied for many years.

Flack

 

[Bonks]

Well said Flack

Its a shame, if you speak to most of the younger generation (but not all), they laugh if you ever mention that games are nowhere near as much fun as they used to be, with such a large back catalogue of old games i would call utter 'classics', i feel sorry they'll never get the chance to experience them. Well, i guess the GP changes that, but a lot of people wouldnt touch it simply because it wont play the latest 'thing' in this case, GBA

What they dont want to hear or dont beleive, is for every good game on the GBA, there is 10 good games on an older, emulated system, most of which is comming to this system.

One thing i dont agree on is older games you didnt need your brain. Most games these days are made to be pure arcade, games that are complex fail because of the new generation. Take flight sims as the best example, while there are a few that have come out recently (take the excellent IL2 Sturmovik), these are few and far between, not like the loads i could mention on other 'older' systems. Or Dune 2, no offence to those that love the new RTS generation, but Dune 2 craps all over them in terms of atmoshpher, tactics and pure style. There brain dead now, where Dune 2 was not.

This is just my opinion, all i can say is im chuffed to bits i lived through the begining of home computers, rather than just comming in to it now (im 25 )

Cheers

Bonks